Adjusting to a no-sleep kind of life :)

Hola Hola :)

Well this week I think that I will just jump right into it! One of the highlights of the week is that I got a new suit... FOR FREE!!!! At our house, we are the ones that house all of the missionaries when a huge group is in Managua for a meeting or something and they have to stay the night. And it's the same for the missionaries that are leaving for home! They stay in our house, so anyway, one of them, and I don't know who, left a suit behind, and I claimed it!! It fits perfectly as well! The pants might be like 1 inch too long, but it fits well enough to use, so I now have two suits that I almost never wear. And to answer the question, I don't necessarily wear my suit more now that I am in the office, I just attend more meetings that require suits.

So my companion is Elder Clark for the moment, and also technically Elder Chen and Elder Maradiaga. As secretaries, we are all technically companions. And when Elder Clark leaves (which could be before the next Pday possibly) then we will be a trio. Elder Clark is super cool, and he was the financier for the last 6 months, so he has been passing all of his wisdom to me! :)

My companion Elder Clark

Elder Clark (the North American looking one haha)

Elder Chen (the more Asian looking latino that I have really seen, but from Guatamala.)

Elder Maradiaga (from Honduras)

Our schedule here in the office is really nice! We work in the office all day on Mondays. On Tuesday to Thursday, we are supposed to be in the office until 2, and then we are supposed to do our studies and get to the area by 4 or 4:30. On Friday we have Pday. And Saturday and Sunday we work in our area all day, so yes, we still have time (normally) to work in our area. When it is super busy, we have to stay in the office doing stuff until later, so sometimes we don't get to the area until pretty late. But this week we have been able to follow the schedule pretty well, because there were not a ton of things to do every day like changes week!

Our house, like I hinted at, is huge, and super nice. We are in charge of housing all of the people when they leave or just don't have a place to sleep for the night because their area is far. But we have a nice kitchen and all that good stuff. And the car is supposed to only be used for office work purposes, so when we go to the area or do things on pday, we normally aren't supposed to use the car. But with all of this nice stuff, I am constantly reminded, "With great power comes great responsibility." There is seriously a million things to do every day. Because we have a car, we get the surprise calls to do random things. But I really like serving in this position.

The study.

The bedroom/bathroom that we use.

Something that is difficult sometimes though is that we are always in charge of taking people to the airport, whether they go home early for medical or other reasons, or when they are supposed to. That wouldn't be too bad except that the flights are always scheduled super early in the morning, so we have to wake up at like 4am to do it. It is also really rare that we get to bed on time, because we are always figuring things out, sometimes having to make late night runs to the office to grab something for someone, or things like that. So basically, working in the office kind of takes priority over sleep needs... but I can sleep when I am dead! :) I like what Elder Chen and Elder Maradiaga always say(translated to english), "When you accepted the assignment to work in the office, you put your sleep on the alter of God! If you would like your sleep back, you can go ahead and call president Collado and ask him to change you, take a taxi to your new area, and get the normal amount of sleep!" haha super funny when they say it.

But also as the financier, I am in charge of buying food for the meetings that we have. Sometimes it can be a ton of food, I will attach a pic to give you an idea :) haha

  

This is an example of the quantity of food that we bought for a meeting! It was a ton... 

and it was so good!

But like I mentioned, we also get time to work in the area. This week was actually really cool. I spent the week getting to know the branch that we work in a little better, and the members as well. This is the first area I have been in where the members are really willing to work with us. I think the difference is that my Branch President in Estelí had about 20 years in his calling, and my Bishop in La Rotonda had about 10 years in his. But this Branch President here in Ducualí is super willing to work with us because he only has like 4 months in his calling. Time in a calling shouldn't play a role in your willingness to serve, but I am seeing a pattern here. Anyway, we have already seen greater success with the members.

One member gave us a reference and came and visited with us to a young couple with their three kids, Margina and Uriel. I only remember the little girls name, Soy. But we have only been able to teach a little to them, because Uriel has a crazy work schedule so we normally only encounter Margina with the kids. But she is totally going to go to church this Sunday, with or without her husband. She has promised us to wash the clothes on Saturday instead of Sunday so that she will have time no matter what. I am so excited and we are praying that Uriel will be able to come too!

Through our own efforts, we found this drunk man on the street one night, and decided to talk to him for a bit to see how he was doing. After a little, he agreed to let us talk to his wife, and she was a little hard hearted at first, but we were persistent. She told us about how her husband had been a heavy drinker for about 6 months now, literally drunk EVERY DAY FOR 6 MONTHS!! Craziness... But after listening for a bit, she was totally willing to have us visit to help him out of this problem and to help strengthen their marriage. Sadly he is always drunk in the evenings and that's the only time we can get to the area to work, but we were able to pass them on the the Hermanas that work in our area as well! Hopefully they will take good care of them.

Spiritual Thought:

So this week I read a talk from, Dallin H. Oaks entitled "Why do we Serve" It is such a good talk, because it talks about the reasons we do service, and what kinds of rewards we are looking for. He kind of classifies our motives for service in 6 different categories, from best to worst. The worst being service for earthly motives, and the best being service out of pure love, the pure love of Christ. I have read this talk and thought hard about my motives for my service in all aspects of my life. Afterwards, I began to think of how I could make the motives of my service more meaningful. I encourage you all to do the same after reading the talk!
https://www.lds.org/ensign/1984/11/why-do-we-serve?lang=eng

Funny Story (sort of):

So we were leaving the office building one day and Elder Clark told me he had a surprise for me, and that I had to just wait one second. Our office here in Managua is on the second floor of the building and I was feeling lazy so I wanted to take the elevator. After we entered, Elder Clark turned on some "elevator music" on the phone, and I didn't notice, so I was wondering where the elevator music was coming from! I thought maybe it was newly installed or something... but then I figured out it was just him, and we laughed....

Not my best one yet, but it is the best I've got for this week!

Love you all! And be safe this week!

Love, Elder Moser